Message-Id: <m0s9vsW-0009acC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Fri, 12 May 1995 10:42:07 EDT
Reply-To:     jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From:         jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Subject:      Re: proposals
To:           Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 1817
Lines: 40

pc:
> I can't recommend reading Fennimore Cooper (see Mark Twain's lit crit),
> but I just noticed that he does a lot of using time markers for space: a
> place is two days away and the like.  We could unpack this, of course, to
> "the distance we could walk in two days" or some such, but that seems
> unnecessary -- except that not doing so means we need tensor markers for
> both time and space, not just a single one for both.

Of course, that doesn't present a difficulty in my idiolect:
{va lei re djedi} means "a spatial distance of two days".

> Out side of physics,
> I don't know of a case of using spatial terms for times.

Well, as long as there is a reference velocity, times and distances
become more or less equivalent. For example, describing a trip you
might say "it rained from Pittsburgh to Washington, but after that
it was sunny", is that a spatial or time distance? It can be thought
as either. Or "When are we going to stop?" "After three more
kilometers." "I can't wait that long!" That's a time. If a place can
be two days away, a time can be three kilometers later.

> But I also
> thought of the now virtually impenetrable "Bogies at 10:30 high" which is
> an overt time reference for a _vector_(!) "Enemy aircraft about 45
> degrees left of straight ahead and more than 30 degrees (I think it is --
> you have to look up anyhow) above level"

That's a different matter! Using hours for compass directions is purely
conventional, and has to do with the usual arrangement of numbers on
a dial. (Some watches are made to run counterclockwise, btw, that would
confuse our pilot :)

> More evidence for a needed
> spatial vector marker that takes sumti for the direction, not the origin
> (but how do we say the origin in that case?).

The origin can always be said with {ki}, can't it?

Jorge